PTSD: The Silent Enemy

Addiction, alcoholism, failed marriages, failures as a parent, on and on. Homelessness. Yes, PTSD takes no prisoners and does not discriminate.

(DANANG, Vietnam) - Fear, paranoia, procrastination, self destruction, isolation, depression – I can go on and on with adjectives and descriptions. The feelings are so familiar to so many of us. The disease is insidious.

We think the feelings go away, just to find out after days of feeling good, they come right back and kick our ass. For many of us, we might even think we have been cured – months if not years had passed and none of the symptoms had surfaced.

Then out of the clear blue – an assault we were not prepared for. An assault against our will, our brain even against our physical being. PTSD is here to stay.

Operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way but actually with grave effect: an insidious disease.

As I consider the bowels of PTSD and where it took so many of us, the word insidious remains engraved in my own brain – kind of like a permanent testimony one would find on a gravestone. What also remains carved in that same memory is the VA psychiatrist who looked me up and down, declared that I looked fine to him, welcomed me back home, and off I was sent to face civilian life like some abandoned child left to fend for himself in some very dark horror story. What the heck was going on? Am I really ok and should I really be jumping like a crazed lunatic every time a I hear a loud noise or when I wake up drenched in sweat from another sleepless night filled with nightmares? The next 35 years, for this Marine, would be filled with experiences only my brothers and sisters who suffer the same will even vaguely recognize.

Addiction, alcoholism, failed marriages, failures as a parent, on and on. Homelessness. Yes, PTSD takes no prisoners and does not discriminate. PTSD has each of us in its crosshairs, gently squeezes the trigger, and successfully kills. We are all victims, in my opinion. Some of us can cope (we think we can) others die trying. Others are successfully treated just to find after they feel they are cured, PTSD was waiting for them to declare victory – just to relapse once again into any one of hundreds of possible scenarios that will take them hostage once again.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (also known as post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD) is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma. This event may involve the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one's own or someone else's physical, sexual, or psychological integrity, overwhelming the individual's ability to cope. As an effect of psychological trauma, PTSD is less frequent and more enduring than the more commonly seen acute stress response.

Diagnostic symptoms for PTSD include re-experiencing the original trauma(s) through flashbacks or nightmares, avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, and increased arousal – such as difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger, and hyper-vigilance. Formal diagnostic criteria (both DSM-IV-TR and ICD-9) require that the symptoms last more than one month and cause significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is classified as an anxiety disorder, characterized by aversive anxiety-related experiences, behaviors, and physiological responses that develop after exposure to a psychologically traumatic event (sometimes months after). Its features persist for longer than 30 days, which distinguishes it from the briefer acute stress disorder. These persisting posttraumatic stress symptoms cause significant disruptions of one or more important areas of life function. It has three sub-forms: acute, chronic, and delayed-onset.

Being the son and nephew of World War II veterans, dad and my uncles referred to it as “shell shock” and “battle fatigue”. This is sometimes argued but let’s not mince words – whatever labels the government and society decides to call it, PTSD is clearly a severe anxiety disorder responsible for the disruption and destruction of millions of lives – yes, the collateral damage adds to the numbers.

As mentioned in the description above, it’s not just military or combat veterans who are at risk and end up as victims. Anyone subject to the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one's own or someone else's physical, sexual, or psychological integrity, overwhelming the individual's ability to cope could become a victim of PTSD.

To all who suffer from it, we know that it hides and we receive false hopes that we might be cured. I am in no way bringing news of doom and gloom – rather I am bringing news of reality. We must seek help and we must continue for most if not all of our natural lives, the therapy as well as any and all other prescribed advice and treatment so we have the ability to live as close to normal as we can.

As I write this piece, I cannot help but be aware of the date today – September 6, 2010. We are 5 days away from the 9th anniversary of that tragic event of 9-11-01. Will those victims who survived cope as I hope they can? Will those of us who are victims of multiple events cope as I hope we will?

The events of my past are so vivid – most, from the tragic past. But certainly some of the beautiful past as well – the birth of my daughter, for example. Etched in a forever beauty that I will never forget. But why does the good not outweigh the bad? Why does the negative outweigh the positive? For me, I have struggled with this exact topic my entire life – yes, my life. This is not about “poor me”, it is about helping others who are in much more dire condition. I describe what I go through with the hope that there is someone who might have advice, might have a recommendation.

911, for example, is etched in my mind so vividly and as vividly as so many other tragic events. But of course there were in fact several joyous events in my life as well. Could it be that the negative does outweigh the positive and it simply boils down to that? To simple psychological arithmetic? A scorecard of sorts with the negatives wining? I remember watching one of the Towers burn during the live coverage just to see the second jet strike. But I also was in the delivery room to see my little girl come into this world years earlier. Was it the bombardment of media? The feeling of vulnerability? The helplessness? The lives lost? What about that beautiful birth?

There are also theories that many of us are predisposed to certain activities. For example, some of us have taken the course of alcoholism and/or drug addiction, triggered by (perhaps) a traumatic event such as combat, a sexual assault, a terrorist attack because we might have inherited a gene or we were raised in a family where alcoholism or drug addiction was prevalent.

In my opinion, it matters not – the pain any one of us suffers, triggered by whatever, is no different – predisposed or not. The pain, the suffering, and the collateral damage – it’s all the same.

The suicide factor of those who suffer from PTSD is staggering – just one example is this: At the time the US lost 761 combat troops in Afghanistan, 817 combat vets from that same war took their own lives. Unreal? Yes. Sad? Yes. Preventable? In my opinion? Absolutely!

Suicidal people meet the formal criteria for PTSD. Severe and prolonged suicidal pain is not something that most people suffer. People in suicidal crises feel that they are at the breaking point of what they can cope with. Since 30,000 people die by suicide each year in the United States, it is a condition that poses a serious threat to the loss of life.

As with many emotional and psychological disorders, our society places us in a corner. We are not “normal”. We are labeled and we are shunned. Thank goodness many more of us from recent combat scenarios and traumatic events are being helped – but what about those of us who continue to suffer in silence each and every day because of the pain associated with just waking up and facing another day?

When the phone rang I jumped a little, startled, and nearly shot myself. This would have been ironic because I was holding the pistol in my hand planning to kill myself — but I would have pulled the trigger while it was pointed at my foot rather than my head.

This was in 2005. I was a soldier on active duty. I spent more than 20 years working in places like Kosovo, Rwanda, Afghanistan, Iraq and Darfur. I've seen some bad stuff, and somewhere along the way, my brain stopped working right. I have post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

I remember lying on my cot in my tent in Afghanistan bundled into my sleeping bag, terrified because the dead had come to talk with me. They came every night, wresting me away from a warm, comforting sleep into a series of wretched, tormenting, wide-awake dreams.

On one night, it would be a farmer and his wife burned Bible-black and twisted into hideous shapes who asked, "Do you remember us?" Oh, most certainly. On another, 42 men all shot in the back or in the head and left to die in a rocky ditch on a frozen January morning. "Why didn't you do more to save us?" they asked. Why, indeed.

The images terrified me mostly because I couldn't stop them from taking control of my mind. I knew I needed help but I didn't ask for it because I thought I would be ridiculed, considered weak and cowardly.

In Army culture, especially in the elite unit filled with rangers and paratroopers in which I served, asking for help was showing weakness. My two Bronze Stars, my tours in Airborne and Special Operations units, none of these would matter. To ask for help would be seen as breaking.

To ask for help would be seen as breaking. We are looked upon as “less then”. Certainly by our military peers. Definitely, by society as a whole, as well. Indeed.

For us to become useful in our society, heck, to become useful to ourselves and to our families, ask for help.

Also please realize, for the Veterans amongst us, the DVA has made it easier for us to file claims and seek assistance – take advantage of what is rightfully ours.

Welcome home brothers and sisters – you might look fine, but you need help and we are going to make sure you receive it!

Chuck Palazzo is a Marine Corps Vietnam Veteran, the Interim Editor for Agent Orange, and a longtime Vietnam Veterans Against the War Member. Chuck Palazzo has spent years since the war studying the impacts and effects of Agent Orange, a defoliant chemical sprayed by the U.S. govt. on the jungles of Vietnam. He says Dioxins have been re-discovered to cause all sorts of damage to humans. These include Heart Disease, Parkinsonism, Diabetes et cetera. Dioxins are already known to produce serious birth defects and a variety of cancers. The chemical is still sold in Third World Countries and is causing the same problems.

We at Salem-News.com welcome Chuck aboard and look forward to sharing more of his stories with our readers in the future.